We’re still recovering from the smörgåsbord of Star Wars news that came out of the Star Wars Celebration in London. Those in attendance got sneak peeks of Andor season two, The Acolyte, Skeleton Crew, and the first 10 minutes of tomorrow’s The Mandalorian. Sadly, these trailers were exclusive to those in attendance (though cam footage was briefly available on social media), so reactions are all second-hand. However, we did get the awesome Ahsoka trailer, which looks like it’s going to live up to the hype.
But even those paled in comparison to the bombshell triple announcement of three new Star Wars movies. Dave Filoni will pull an MCU-style team-up movie that’ll wrap up plot elements from The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and various animated shows. Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny‘s James Mangold will helm Dawn of the Jedi about the very first Jedi in the galaxy. And, last but by no means least, Daisy Ridley’s Rey is returning for a sequel set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker.
That was all in one presentation, but later, we got some great Ahsoka casting news and an awesome trailer for Star Wars Visions season two. Talk about a busy weekend!
Kathleen Kennedy confirms the Rey script is almost done
We’d already known Disney and Lucasfilm was eager to continue the Star Wars saga beyond The Rise of Skywalker, though those plans recently hit a roadblock when Damon Lindelof was booted off the project after turning in a script. But Lucasfilm wasted no time finding a replacement in Peaky Blinders‘ Steven Knight. That it’s willing to announce the film now suggests that his concept has been approved and he’s currently hard at work on it.
Now Kathleen Kennedy has indicated when it’ll be complete. Speaking with Yahoo!, she confirmed that this has already been in development for some time and that it’ll likely be done in early June.
“We’ve been working on that [film] for a few years and all of that feeds in to our overall storytelling. So we’ve just got to a point now where we’ve got a wonderful writer in Steven Knight, he’s come on board and we’re going to see a script probably in the next month and a half that we’ve been working on for quite a while. So we’re getting close.”
It also seems like Lucasfilm has been happy to take their sweet time getting this right, hopefully atoning for the disastrous and rushed The Rise of Skywalker.
“There’s never a time where something is just instantly suggested. It’s such an evolution of conversations that we have all the time and we knew coming off of The Rise of Skywalker that we needed to take that further. We just didn’t know how far out; we didn’t know exactly what the story might be – but now we have a much better idea.”
This so-far-untitled movie is currently set for release on Dec. 19, 2025. We hope it doesn’t face a delay, though we wouldn’t be surprised if it does.
But don’t hold your breath for more Obi-Wan Kenobi
Ewan McGregor delighted fans with an appearance at the Star Wars Celebration, particularly as he finally crossed paths with his Obi-Wan voice actor counterpart James Arnold Taylor. Despite this, it sounds like Lucasfilm isn’t eager to continue his adventures in a second season of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Once again, we turn to Kathleen Kennedy, who was asked by Variety whether season two was coming.
“That is not in active development. But I never say never, because there’s always the possibility. That show was so well-received and [director] Deborah Chow did such a spectacular job. Ewan McGregor really wants to do another. Everybody’s all hands on deck with what we’re doing right now, as you can see by what we showed everybody [at the Celebration]. We’ll turn our attention to that again maybe down the road.”
It’s worth wondering where a second season of Obi-Wan Kenobi could go. The first season flew perilously close to the sun in showing that Kenobi actually had a secret adventure and dueled Darth Vader before A New Hope. This just about made sense as part of the canon, but squeezing in yet more adventures when he’s supposed to be a harmless old hermit on Tatooine may stretch credibility.
Then again, we really want to see more of grumpy Force ghost Qui-Gon Jinn, so let’s keep the fires quietly burning until we hear more.
Here’s our full run-down of who’s working on Visions season two
We adored the first season of Star Wars Visions back in 2021. Lucasfilm handed Star Wars to some of the great anime studios in Japan and gave them creative freedom to tell whatever story they wanted, canon be cursed. The results were something special, particularly “The Ninth Jedi” and the Kurosawa-inspired “The Duel.”
Season two is expanding its horizons beyond Japan and will feature animation studios from around the world. Studios in Chile, South Africa, India, Ireland, and Spain (among others) are beavering away on their own Star Wars shorts and the trailer gives us many reasons to be excited. So, with that in mind, please check out our full run-down of these animation studios and the projects they’ve worked on you may have already heard of.
We’d be happy to see Visions continue indefinitely, perhaps getting some of these Love, Death + Robots studios on board for Star Wars stories that just wouldn’t work as part of the core continuity.
Visions season two will drop on Disney Plus on Star Wars Day, May 4.
After the weekend’s excitement, we now have a new episode of The Mandalorian to look forward to tomorrow. This is the penultimate episode of the third season, with reports from the Celebration event indicating we’re going to see some big names making their first strides into live-action. As usual, we’ll be burning the midnight oil and covering it the moment it’s released, so be sure to come back for more!
Published: Apr 11, 2023 10:00 pm